


Each Time Again

by gingerteaandsympathy



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Inspired by Eros and Psyche (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), and he's got wings!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-19 09:36:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22742461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingerteaandsympathy/pseuds/gingerteaandsympathy
Summary: Every night, he comes to her bedside under cover of darkness. Each time, she opens her arms.
Relationships: Ninth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Comments: 16
Kudos: 85





	Each Time Again

**Author's Note:**

> what it says on the tin! this little fic is based—pretty loosely—on the characters of eros and psyche and their story. title stolen from tamino's song "each time," because i'm trash. pre-read by lotsofthinkythoughts, who is better than a whole pantheon of gods and goddesses. that said, please forgive any and all mistakes; i tend to write late at night, as you all know.

She doesn’t have to see him to know he’s beautiful.

Still, she thinks wistfully, she’d _like_ to see him properly.

The fact that he places his hand over her eyes from the moment he enters is little more than an inconvenience. It would still be enough to make out shade and light, to know whether his skin is dark or fair, the tones of him warm or cool. All that, even if there was nothing else, would still paint a sort of picture.

No, it’s the darkness that truly puts out her eyes.

It’s the way he resists light: extinguishing every bulb in the house; fidgeting if she shifts, even slightly, toward the lamp on her bedside table; on bad nights, insisting on blindfolds of soft, crimson silk, until her vision is painted red all through the night; pulling the creamy sheets up over every inch of them, her duvet becoming a cavern where they reach heights and depths in mutual, blind exploration.

At least, she _hopes_ it’s mutual.

She chews her lip.

He must see better in the dark than she does, because she feels his thumb press against her battered bottom lip, pulling it from between her teeth. “None of that,” he whispers. She can feel his breath fan across her face and shivers. She should be content, sated, even sluggish in her own little afterglow. But she still feels her whole being as a raw nerve, and he knows—he is the only one who knows—how much pressure to apply. How much pressure she can take.

Her tongue darts out—impertinent, tasting smoke and salt. He hums.

She never knows what to do now—after—except wait for the unendurable heat to build back up between them, or wait for sleep. He never leaves so long as she is awake; that would be a vulnerability. But she is too agitated for rest, and she is to spent for sex, so she must find some other occupation.

Her hand drifts out to touch him, to engage in this familiar pastime. He doesn’t always have the patience for it, but maybe tonight…

“May I?” Her voice is also a whisper, muted by the soft knit all around.

“Of course,” he says, like it is natural. Like anything about this—about him, about _them_ —is natural. Like he always wants to be touched by her adoring little fingers, when they both know that isn’t the case.

Some nights, she wonders why he even comes at all.

So, while she can, she lets her fingers see what her eyes cannot.

She is intimately familiar with the topography of his chest and neck; it is, after all, where he likes to keep her hands, her feet, occasionally her thighs. When she lets her fingers drift slowly, she can even make out the rough texture where she’s left scratches, gripped too tightly. For as inscrutable as he might seem, his flesh is pliable and soft—so achingly soft—to the touch. Easy to mark. She imagines it going pink under daylight, marred by finger-shaped bruises and love bites.

When her hand meets the curve of his neck, he tilts to grant her access. He can be so trusting, here in the dark. It takes her breath away.

She lets her fingers fan out, a crescent around the front of his neck. She can feel his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows, and she lets her hand momentarily tighten. It is not enough to pin him down—only a mockery of pressure, a hint of the sway she wishes she had over him. His chuckle is a low rumble, vibrating against her stretched fingers, and feels her own smile rising to meet his. “You’d need both hands,” he rasps.

She doesn’t quite have the courage for that, even in jest. Her other hand remains where it is, tucked under her cheek.

Still, her touch drifts higher: cups his chin, stroking the slight stubble; curves under his lush bottom lip; sculpts out his cheekbones and the jut of his brow. Her fingers flit up into his hair, the cropped strands like velvet, before drifting back to his face.

When her fingers brush over the delicate skin of his eyelids, the slope of his nose, she has barely a moment of sensation— _large, well-shaped_ —before his hand darts up to grasp hers. 

To lower it, away from his face— _away from identifying features,_ she mourns—and then to press it, open-palmed, against the heat of his chest. His heartbeat is slow and even.

When she exhales, it is shaky, and she realizes how long she’s been holding her breath.

Lower is the familiar plane of his stomach, the Adonis belt—and she chuckles at the very thought; he is _good,_ of course, but he is no _god_ —and then, as she curves back up, the faint ripple of his ribcage. She cups her hand around his side and feels the unhurried, rippling rhythm of his breathing. The slow expansions and contractions speak of deep lethargy, and she feels an unfamiliar pressure in her chest. It is shaped like a wish: that he might let himself find rest, here with her.

There is a chance—some optimistic part of her insists. He might.

After all, she doesn’t normally get this far.

The new territory, small as it is, feels forbidden, and she almost shivers with the novelty. Wickedly, she wonders if he’s ticklish, and her fingers suddenly curl, ready to dig in and torment the sensitive skin beneath them. She imagines what surprise might sound like in his voice. Would it manifest as a low growl? A sharp laugh? Or—and this is nearly enough to make her do it—would he _giggle_? His laughter would surely be sweet, unrestrained and unexpected like that. Nothing like the dry chuckles he allows himself for her benefit, and which seem to travel through her body like a rolling current.

Before her curiosity can overcome her, he is gripping her hand again, dragging it to rest against his chest. This seems to be the safest place to touch him. 

Strange, as it’s where his heart lies.

“Enough,” he commands, though gently. His fingers curl around hers in a way that could almost be protective—if she didn’t already know he was protecting himself. From her. From her _knowing_ him. It stings, and it takes all she has not to rip her hand out of his grasp, to demand that he leave her bed right now and not return.

Only she won’t do that; they both know it.

Still, the restlessness seems to travel—from her palm, up her arm, rattling through her chest and ascending her throat until she is speaking, unprompted. “Turn over,” she says, her voice almost loud in the small space, and surprisingly clear.

His body turns to stone beneath her hand.

She has asked things of him before. Pleaded, even, for little intimacies. And he has brushed her off—with a heady kiss, with a sharp retort, with a rumbling laugh. But she has never commanded; she has never asserted any sort of ownership over him or his body or his place in this bed.

It is not her nature to be retiring, but he has a way of putting her off balance. 

Not tonight, it seems. She remains, hand locked in his, her spine straight and her breathing steady. She waits while he relaxes, one tiny muscle at a time. She can almost make out the motion in the dark—the gentle swell of his shoulders as he breathes again, and his uneasy shifting against the bedsheets. She imagines a flush crawling up a pale throat, perhaps underneath a beauty mark, over his Adam’s apple. Why, she wonders, is she seeing such a thing? Why, when she hasn’t seen enough of him to know?

“Why?” His voice echoes her thoughts, only he is asking a very different question.

There is a vulnerability in the word that bids her _be gentle._

She swallows. “So I can touch you.”

He sounds rueful when he says, “You _are_ touching me.” His hand is tightening around hers, the pressure grating her knuckles and phalanxes, but she doesn’t flinch. In his way, he is drawing a perverse sort of comfort from this—his control of her hand. She only looses her fingers from his, and lets her hand resume its travels across the planes of his torso—long, smooth strokes.

“Give me this,” she coaxes. _When I’ve given so much,_ she does not say. Her touch drifts down the fine trail of hair just beneath his navel.

He is silent.

Her finger travels upwards once again—out of mercy or cowardice, she isn’t sure. She doesn't want to start something he will ensure they finish. 

“Are you afraid,” and his stomach clenches reflexively under her at the word _afraid_ , “I might stab you while your back is turned?” Her voice is light, dancing over the absurdity of it. He has all the power—and surely he knows it—he has always had the power, and she has never asked anything much in return.

Only to see him—a request vehemently denied, without exception.

And now, only to trust her and turn his back to her.

She can almost visualize it, when she closes her eyes. The wide expanse of skin. Her fingers have clutched at the curve of his shoulder before being gently moved. She has felt the nubs of vertebrae at the base of his neck. She can all but see the ridges of muscle, the shards of his scapula, the way it all surely ripples when he moves his arms. He could tense or relax under her touch, and she would feel it. 

She wants that power, just for a moment—to lay her hand on his spine and travel its length. To feel each notch under his ribs.

To reassure herself that there is more to his body than the tools of pleasure and satisfaction that he wields so masterfully.

To know that when he leaves, he walks upright like any man, held together by the same pieces that she herself possesses.

She wants it so bad she aches.

“You are… an infuriatingly curious,” he whispers—his voice is unnaturally halting, but fond, “and perversely determined,” —yes, he definitely sounds fond; she can hear the smile on his lips— “ _stubborn_ woman.”

He’s considering it—he must be. 

She resists the shiver that threatens to crawl up and down her spine, and instead gives a shuddery laugh. “I just want to know you’re real.” It is a confession. It’s the last argument she has.

He is quiet for a long time. The only sound is the London street traffic and their breath shifting the sheets, chests moving in the same strange synchrony that always moves their bodies and only rarely their minds. 

Finally, he speaks.

“Give me your hand, then.”

She feels triumph: all at once, in a flash. It is golden. She’s sure that, if he’s looking, he can see the smile that bursts across her lips before she can halt it. “Alright,” she breathes.

She moves obediently—extending her hand in front of him, palm facing his chest. She can feel heat rising in the millimeters of space between them. He is always warm to the touch, like standing before an open flame, and she feels more intensely aware of his heat than ever. More than that, she isn’t quite sure how or why her nervousness has turned—so instantly, so irreversibly—into a thrill that makes her stomach quiver. It’s as if this moment will redefine everything.

Like a dam bursting, or a door opening.

He holds her hand in his for a long moment, and she wants to squeeze him—in reassurance, though he’d likely mistake it for urgency.

He places her open palm on the curve of his shoulder. The pressure of his hand is steady on hers, and reluctant to lift. But she can be patient.

So patient.

“I’ll go slow,” she promises.

She can feel him nod, but she can’t see it, even with their faces less than a foot apart.

“Can I come closer?” She keeps her voice low and gentle, trying to soothe him the way she might someone injured or frightened. He is so obviously one of the two. A thought comes, hasty and sharp—perhaps he’s both. But he nods again. She wiggles forward, and the friction against her body, the encroaching heat, the way his hand releases hers and falls to her hip—it all sends a tiny, pulsing ache through her. Her thighs clench and she catches herself right as her teeth go to bite down on her bottom lip. 

She can hear his voice, chiding. _None of that._

“Alright—I’m going to move now.”

“I’m not a horse,” he bites out. “You won’t frighten me away.” But his tone says otherwise. And then the low rush of his voice is pulling her closer, closer, and she wants so much to close the space between them and capture the words right as they leave his mouth. It’s mad, she knows, to want someone so much—someone she doesn’t even know, really. She feels it as a compulsion, coiling and uncoiling in the hollow of her belly: always to be near him, always to come closer.

But she doesn’t close the distance. Instead, she shifts just slightly, her mouth pressing to his jaw—the stubble bites back at her bruised lips—delicate and questioning. “Good,” she whispers in reply. “You won’t frighten me away either.”

And it is only when the puff of air fans out into her hair, when she can feel the smirk in his cheeks, that she continues. Her hand cresting the curve of his shoulder and skidding downwards feels deliciously indulgent. It’s a slim expanse of skin, but she savors it and moves slowly—exploring everything she touches with the tactile tips of her fingers, trying to commit it all to memory, trying to turn him into a map she could follow with her eyes. 

Though, in this moment, they are closed. Everything is darker than dark.

Instead of plunging down further, she skates her hands over the top of his back, her fingers carelessly catching at the bumps of his spine. She finds herself squirming even closer, her bare breasts pressed against his chest as she stretches her arm across the breadth of his shoulders. His hand tightens on her hip—a warning.

It’s not much more freedom of movement than he’s given her before. In the outside world, it would be the most informal sort of hug and it’s only the swaths of skin contact that make it anything more. She lingers until his shoulders drop, until the tension starts to slip away again, and then she returns the way she came, stopping at the base of his neck. Slowly, she slides her hand up and into his hair; she could get lost in the softness of it.

As her fingers scratch softly against his scalp, he lets out a contented little hum. Almost a purr. And, once again, she shifts her thighs. They want to wrap around his hips and pull him flush to her. They want to cease this frightening experiment and return to the things that they are good at—the things that are safe. Friction, fire, fucking.

But she rests her chin against the curve of his neck and inhales. She will take what he is giving her, she knows, and she’ll do it gladly. Slowly, as not to startle him, she trails her hand down his neck, noting the first notches of his spine in a slow and cautious exploration, flatting her hand along the way, and—

And she stops.

And he is not breathing. Again, he is stone beneath her fingertips. 

“What—?”

She sounds helpless. Breathless.

“I…”

She tries again, but she can’t make sense of it. The skin starts to rise at the heel of her hand and the tips of her fingers—as if pressed upwards by bones that no human can have. There should be the gentle downward slope of ribs, nothing like—

Her hand moves of its own volition. Toward those ridges. Up them, to where—

“Oh my god.”

It’s the softest thing she’s ever felt. Under her fingers, right now—the most unbelievable texture. Like sticking her hand in eiderdown, only _more._ Like the entire concept of birds having feathers is merely a distant, gross bastardization of this beautiful, precious reality.

He shivers, and the flexing against her hand—a sudden shift, like one might clench a fist—drags her further into the cloud of softness.

“You have wings,” she breathes, lisping against his skin. She is quiet, but it’s impossible for him not to hear her. “You…” 

Suddenly, she is curling toward him, around him. Protective. It’s an instinct that nearly swallows her in its intensity— _no one can know,_ she thinks, though she can’t understand why. _No one can find out what he is._

All sorts of words are occurring to her. Words like “angel,” and “immortal,” and “mine.” Words that make her chest tighten even as her brain races to make sense of them. And his wing—in which her very human fingers are buried—moves along with his breathing. Expanding and contracting, undeniably a part of him.

Experimentally, she withdraws her hand from the soft shelter, but not all the way. No, the texture is too rich, too addicting for that. Instead, she lets the very tips of her fingers skim down the smallest of the feathers, the ones bunched nearly where his wing meets his back. As she moves, she feels him move too, against her. Even as one hand bruises her hip, spasmodically clenching, the other is sliding around her midsection, tugging her closer.

His breathing is ragged.

“Is this alright?” she asks, clarifying her question with another gentle stroke. A bit more pressure, but still the lightest of touches.

He shudders. 

She wishes—no, she doesn’t wish. She has a _need_ , sudden and strong, to see his face. But she can’t. It’s darkness heaped upon darkness with him. So she stops, and she waits for his breathing to even out.

“Yes,” he whispers. His voice is hoarse—and it always, _always_ makes her shiver when she hears him speak like this, when the rawness of his voice sinks into her body and bends her to whatever he wants. But there’s something desperate about it just now; it is not play, done for her benefit. It holds no mystery. His voice wobbles. “It feels nice, actually.”

She has to keep herself from tightening her hand around his delicate feathers, the tenderness like an ache under her ribs. Instead, she repeats the same motion—a fluttering touch, the needle-like shaft of a feather quivering under her hand. 

She feels the tension in their bodies, being passed back and forth like a kiss, and she wants to release it.

“Can I—?” she begins.

“Yes,” he croaks.

She almost laughs. “You don’t know what I’m going to ask.”

“Whatever it is, you can do it.”

“So, if I asked to see your face…?”

He sighs into her hair as her hand makes its trembling way down another gathering of feathers, wandering away from the smaller ones and toward the larger, primary feathers that she knows must extend down his back.

“Anything but that.”

She smiles, and presses an open-mouthed kiss against his collarbone. “I had to ask.”

“I know.”

She sighs, and he sighs into her, and his wings flex again. She is luxuriating in the plush feathers and the way he seems to lean further into her with every touch. She can feel his nose burrowing into the hollow of her throat, his eyelashes fluttering at her neck. She tries not to sound so breathless when she asks, “How?”

He shrugs, and the whole of his wing shifts with him. It’s surreal, and she wishes for perhaps the thousandth time that she could see him. Now it’s more than wanting eyes and nose, freckles or moles; it’s more than hoping for a blurred outline of a body, tones and shades like an impressionist painting. She’s seeing feathers behind her eyelids—pure white, iridescent blues like an oil spill, dusky dark, dove grey, a shock of cardinal red, jay bright, the tawny tones of an owl. The possibilities are more varied and complex than even the hairs atop his head. She wants to see his wings stretch and flex, spread and retract.

“Born with them,” he replies.

“And you hide them?”

He nods. The burr of his chin abrades her collarbone.

“They’re beautiful,” she murmurs.

His laugh is drawn out of him like poison from a wound, slick and bitter. “You can’t see them.”

“I don’t have to see any part of you to know you’re beautiful,” she insists. The conviction burns her chest. “Wings don’t change that.”

“Stubborn woman.” He echoes himself. His voice is still throaty and low and husky, though, and a thousand other adjectives she can think of, and the fluttering in her body seems to rise despite her. The want. She’s all but crushed to him, and each breath they take undulates between their bodies.

She must distract them—both of them. Mostly herself.

“How do you hide them?”

“You always ask the right questions,” he says. It’s a compliment, even if he doesn’t make it sound like one; he makes it sound like a nuisance. “The answer is complicated. More so for a human.”

It’s the first explicit acknowledgement that he’s not human, she realizes, though the hints had always been there. The fiery heat coming off him like a furnace, the subtle power in his voice—her mind races—the fact that she’d never, _foolishly_ never insisted on seeing his face, never given an ultimatum, abandoning the usual stubbornness and strength that _made her who she was_ —

He cuts off her burgeoning panic with a kiss, latched to the side of her neck. There will be a bruise tomorrow; there always is.

“Right,” she exhales slowly, trying to control her racing heartbeat. The danger of this new territory seems to dance deliciously alongside the sensation on her skin. His hand massages her thigh in time with the strokes of his tongue. “So, definitely not human.” His only answer is a hum into her throat. “But—?”

“Rose,” he says— _finally_ , she thinks. _No one says it like he does_ —her name coming out of him as if torn. It sends shivers up her spine. There is too much tied up in that one word, too much to untangle. Command, first and foremost. Weariness, warning, warmth. “Stop.”

First comes the drop in her stomach. Something like guilt. _No one can know._ She’d said it herself. Not even she can know.

And then the determination comes, flickering to life deep in her chest.

He’d come into her bed _every night_ , for _months._ She’d kept her eyes closed when he asked, her hands occupied, her curiosity—mostly—at bay. She’d done everything he commanded, everything he requested, everything he needed, because she needed it, too. Because there was a pull somewhere inside her that demanded closeness—not just to anyone. To him. Because she’d always felt something like fondness for the person who seemed so intent to bring her pleasure, and who sometimes felt so far away. Because she liked to feel his smile curve beneath her fingertips, and to feel his heart speed—just slightly, just sometimes—under her open hands.

“Fine,” she concedes, her voice wavering. 

It is not fine. 

And she will _not_ stop—not really. Tonight, perhaps, but not forever. She can’t help herself—she has to know.

“But you don’t scare me,” she adds.

“Of course I don’t. Nothing scares you, you stubborn woman.” And the way he calls her unyielding, reminding her that she’s a thorn in his side, feels almost like a confession of something else. She can hear the smile in the word, wide and affectionate.

Still lethargic, so slow, he rolls her onto her back, her hand slipping away from his wing. She feels the loss instantaneously, and her fingers grasp at emptiness. He hovers over her, an inky smudge under the covers. And Rose wishes for a flashlight, for the moonlight, for a candle. She would burn the whole house down, the whole city, for a chance to see this creature’s true face: this _man’s_ true face.

He presses his body down on hers—larger and swallowing, familiar and beloved in every line—and she tries studiously to let her mind go blank. She will let the tide rise for tonight. Her hips arch, her hands grasp—though no longer at the surreal softness of feathers—and they both forget that it’s only a matter of time.


End file.
